Susana H. Case lives in New York City and is a professor at the New York Institute of Technology. Many journals have published her poems, including Cider Press Review, Hawai’i Pacific Review, Portland Review, and Potomac Review. She is the author of The Scottish Café (Slapering Hol Press, 2002), Hiking The Desert In High Heels (RightHandPointing, 2005), and Anthropologist In Ohio (Main Street Rag Publishing Company, 2005). A dual English-Polish version of The Scottish Café is forthcoming from Opole University Press. Married to the artist, Eric Hoffmann, she based The Cost of Heat loosely upon her life with him.

“Language and thought sizzle in Susana H. Case's 'The Cost of Heat.' The Vocabulary of science cohabits with vocabularies of lust and love, embodied in titles from 'Sexing the Fish,' to 'Communing with Einstein,' But the richest surprise is the result of wit and tough tenderness: a deeply affecting, unique collection of poems.”

—Estha Weiner

The Cost of Heat

What I'm surprised to miss: cramps,
the fusty smell. Men
who pull away in prissiness
are not worth loving. Love draws gore.
Despite the blood,
the sweat, the tears—in their thick,
you never pulled away.
Each of us, a fountain.

In the bathroom, you try to quell fierce
bleeding from a cut on your thumb. A sharp
widget on the radiator
fiddled with because the room
I work in is so cold. Not

as chilly as the ground;we'll lay down together
in the cold cold ground.
Each leaking gap contains surprisingly
good color for lips and nails and ambivalence
at the inevitability of blood's drying.